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I took the class with Manning as he was developing the materials (and took admin with the other author). I think you'll find the case book more than sufficient. I'd read the whole casebook, not just the assigned bits. I doubt you'll need any other study aids (I didn't use any) and I doubt any good ones exist. Falll 2010 was the first time the course was ever taught. If anything, you might selectively look at outlines from an admin course. The course was by far the most useful of my 1L year - it doesn't hurt that Manning is one of the best law teachers I've ever met

I didn't use anything else for VA, I passed. I did quickly look at the kaplan stuff for another state (don't remember which) and it seemed better organized/more clear than barbri. At they time they didn't offer VA.

Re in house and stuff - they tend to be people who started at major law firms, the went in house after getting experience (and getting to know their client/new employer). I wouldn't count on decent in house employment right out of law school. Depending on what you do in house you may still need to pass a bar some where.

A lot of people like to be able to move around during the course of their careers. Most everyone I know who's been practicing for a while has practiced and been bared in multiple states. My sample is very much not representative as its mostly alums from my school and co-workers. Virtually every lawyer in my firm are licensed to practice in at least two jurisdictions and many 3+. I don't personally find the ABA tremendously useful in the abstract, but their stamp of approval seems important to state bars and a stamp of approval from state bars is quite important for a legal career. That and I'm currently unaware of many decent schools that aren't aba approved so by default I think you'll end up at aba approved schools.

A CPA is hardly taxes only. Many CPAs do financial advising etc, then eventually become CFOs, directors and that sort of thing.

If the practice of law doesn't especially appeal to you, I suspect the best financial move would be to go forward with the accounting thing and lean toward corporate advising/consulting. If it goes well, have your company send you to a top MBA school and begin to move toward upper management with an eye toward a CFO slot. From what I've seen most or all students from the top three law schools can still get 120-160k jobs straight out of law school if they want them. Some may end up being deferred for a year. The very top students can do much better financially, though its usually deferred (2yrs clerking, then a firm with a 250k signing bonus and above-market pay). Outside the top three, the lower the class rank the lower the average expected income more or less.

I don't know what sort of hours CPAs work, but they are probably fewer than most biglaw associate positions. Expect to be in the office roughly 12hrs a day 5-6 days a week at a typical firm in a major market at first.

Plasma still has the best motion response and the most realistic colors. LED LCD's are getting close and are physically smaller and lighter. If you can deal with a couple of inches of thickness and a few more lbs, plasma is the way to go right now imho (also less expensive than an LED LCD). I've yet to see any serious source rank an LED LCD much less a LCD above a plasma for picture quality.

Re resolution and refresh rate, the above poster is mistaken, they are all the same resolution (by definition a full HD TV is 1920x1080 - stay away from the 720p wanna-be TVs unless you are getting something <40" and aren't super picky). Plasmas have a dramatically higher refresh rate, though at some point the marginal value of refresh rate diminishes. A mid-range panasonic plasma is 600hz, to my knowledge you can't buy any lcd with a rate that's nearly as fast. But this doesn't matter a lot.

Where plasmas still pwn the rest are contrast ratio - nothing else can generate the blacks that you'll get from a plasma. A mid range plasma is 2 million :1.

Plasmas can't compete on form factor, thickness or weight, so if these matter an LCD or better yet LED LCD can be much, much better.

Given all those problems, the rankings still give a general ballpark notion of how schools are viewed relative to eachother. Barpass probably shouldn't be part of ranking at all imho as the point of law school isn't to be a 3-yr barbri course - if anything there's an inverse relationship between bar material covered at a school and bar pass rate - top schools have very high bar pass rates because they attract top students who then study for the bar. Those students would have passed just as easily if they'd skipped law school and gone straight to the bar I think.

In general, its sort of self-perpetuating - the more desirable a school is, the better student's it attracts and the better students it attracts, the better lawyers it produces. Better lawyers make for a better overall reputation and increases the desirability of the school. From my perspective one of the biggest things you purchase when you go to a more competitive school is an, on average, higher quality student body. This makes a big difference wrt networking, learning experience and alumi base. If you are lucky you might also get better professors and a brand name that will make starting your career a lot less work.

Now if anyone can figure out why USNWR cares about number of library books then we'll really make some progress (my theory is that it creates a barrier to entry for new schools).

Within T1 folks often talk about the T14 which is georgetown and up. These move around a bit, but more or less the T14 are always the same T`14. Whether there's a huge gap between georgetown and whatever school is 15th or not I'm not sure - probably not. Within the T14 the T3 are in their own little group and pretty equivalent wrt opportunities and student body, but very different in culture and feel. The next few - Columbia, NYU and Chicago are also more or less all on the same plane. So while you can't really say with any great confidence that one school is definitely deserving of its exact rank, you can usually say that a group of a few schools are pretty similar and better than another clump.

I took it this past summer. Lectures seemed a waste to me regardless of prior experience with the subject. The books generally covered the same material in a more concise manner. If you are one for catch-phrases, bad pop-culture jokes and songs maybe they are useful. I just wanted to learn the crap in as little time as possible. I listened to most of the lectures at 1.5 speed and found that a great improvement.

I really don't know much about the LLM admissions process. I did spend a lot of time with the LLMs at HLS and found it to be an awesome group of students - in many ways a bit tighter knit and more fun and definitely harder-partying than the JD class It was unusual, though not unheard of for an LLM student to attend straight out of college - most had been practicing for several years in their home countries. I did know a few who came straight from college though. From what I've been told (by almost certainly biased sources) the HLS LLM program is one of the best and enjoys the widest international recognition. I do know that the faculty that run the LLM program are truly passionate about the program and the nicest people you'd ever want to meet.

You should try to contact recent alums from your school who are attending or recently finished LLM programs in the states as they will have the most relevant insights for your situation.